Chapter FIFTY-THREE
J.D. called mid-afternoon. “We’re making progress on the Glades connections.”
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Steve Carey has been working on it. He set up a computer program that will help put all the connections together.”
“I didn’t know he could do that.”
“Me neither. I thought he spent all his time off playing golf.”
“What did he come up with?” I asked.
“Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing. I’ve got a spreadsheet if you want to look at it.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll come over. Is now a good time?”
The three of us, Jock, J.D., and I, were sitting at my dining room table, Steve’s spreadsheet in front of us. It wasn’t a spreadsheet that looked like anything I’d ever seen. It certainly wasn’t something dreamed up by Microsoft. There were little boxes with names printed in them and lines running from one box to another, some lines crisscrossing others. The box in the middle had a name printed in it. Jeff Worthington.
J.D. pointed at Worthington’s box. “If we start here, we see a line intersecting with Pete Qualman, the man Jock killed in the Lazy Lobster parking lot. We can also see the people he shared cells with or was close to according to the warden down there. This line runs to Fred Bagby, the man who knifed me. Worthington is the only inmate named Jeff who was connected to Bagby and Qualman at Glades. These other people were friends or cellmates of one or all of the first three. The strange thing is that not one of these people seem to have been connected to the Miami whale tail killer. The timing doesn’t match. Either the men were too young at the time of the murders or they were already incarcerated.”
“Did you arrest any of the men on the sheet?” asked Jock.
“Three of them. But they’re all dead. Two were released and died while on parole and one died in prison. Only one of them was in for a violent crime.”
“I’d think the fact that all three of them are dead would have some significance,” I said.
J.D. nodded. “Normally, that would be true. But the two who died while on parole were both natural deaths. One died of cancer and the other of a gunshot to the head.”
I laughed. “The last one doesn’t sound very natural.”
“Actually, it was. He was in prison for domestic violence. He’d put his wife in the hospital several times and on the last one he was convicted of felonious assault. Sent away for five years. When he got out, he went directly to his wife’s house. She took one look at him and shot him in the forehead. The state attorney ruled it self-defense. I think of it as a natural cause. Beat on a woman long enough and she’ll take you out first chance she gets.”
“What about the one who died in prison?” asked Jock.
“He was up for embezzlement. Nothing violent. He stole a lot of money from some high-profile clients in Miami. I think some heavy pressure was put on the state attorney to put him away for a long time. He got twenty years.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. “Eleven or twelve years ago, I think.”
“You must have been a brand-new detective,” I said.
“Not exactly. I was probably in my second year. I was still working in the fraud division, but I’d started moving into homicide. When the whale tail murders took place, I was still assigned to fraud, but was working a little in homicide, learning the ropes. That’s the way I got involved in the whale tail mess, but I was pretty much on the periphery. That’s the reason I don’t think the murders here have anything to do with me.”
I looked at the box she’d pointed to. The name typed inside was Caleb Picket. “This Picket,” I said. “Did he have any priors? Anything violent in his past?”
“No. He was part of a Miami family that had made a fortune in the cattle business back in the nineteenth century. They still own a large part of downtown Miami, but the money has been spread pretty thin over several generations. Picket was a stockbroker and money manager. He represented a lot of the old guard down there. When I busted him, the old-money people were scandalized. He’d taken them for a lot.”
“Was any of the money recovered?” asked Jock.
“Not a penny. He put it away somewhere. He was living pretty good, but not that good. We found some documents on his computer that led us to believe that he was planning to disappear. I guess he hid the money so that he could get to it when he set up his new life.”
“You don’t see Picket as even a possibility?” I asked.
“I guess he’d be a little pissed at me, but he had no violence in his past and no connection to the whale tail bunch, so I don’t think so. Have you made any progress on the gangbangers?”
I told her about my encounter with them on Gulf of Mexico Drive. “I think they may have me in their sights instead of Jock.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“I agree,” I said, “but what about today? They were prowling my neighborhood and then followed me and blatantly threatened me.”
“This is getting a little crazy,” she said.
“I think we should look more closely at Picket,” Jock said. “Think Occam’s razor.”
J.D. frowned. “The idea that the simplest solution to a problem may be the answer and we should accept it until facts prove us wrong.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Jock.
“I’ve always thought that was too easy,” said J.D.
“Sometimes, easy is right,” I said.
“Look,” said Jock, “we don’t have any explanation for the fact that the same pistol used to kill two women here was used in Miami twelve years ago. And while the whale tail jewelry might be explained as a copycat, we can’t explain the initials carved into the victims’ necks. That information was never made public.”
“And,” I said, “there have been four attempts on J.D.’s life in the past week. Three of those attempts are definitely tied to the whale tail murders. I’m beginning to think that the downtown attempt by the gangbangers was really aimed at me.”
“Right,” said Jock. “And the connection to those three attempts are the former Glades inmate and J.D.’s only connection to them seems to be Picket.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take another look. You get anything else on the gangbangers?”
“Not yet,” said Jock. “But we might have some more for you by morning.”
She shook her head. “Another extra-legal operation, I guess.”
“Something like that,” said Jock. “I’ll let you know the details tomorrow. If anything goes wrong tonight, you’ve got deniability.”
“You guys be careful,” she said. “I don’t have enough friends that I can afford to lose two.”
Maybe if the plan had been better she needn’t have worried. Sadly, it wasn’t.